There is a giant problem that commentators are ignoring. The United States’ trade deficit is of incredible proportions and is only sustainable because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency – a status it is going to lose.
The US trade deficit in 2024 was approximately 1.2 trillion dollars. GDP was approximately 30.1 trillion dollars. That’s a trade deficit of an eye-watering 4% of GDP. By contrast, the EU had no significant trade deficit as a percentage of GDP. Zero. Even the chronic UK trade deficit was only 2.2% of GDP.
Does it matter? Well, historically not much.
The US, as the world’s reserve currency, has been able simply to create more dollars through bonds or quantitative easing to finance its trade deficit. Nobody – including the US Federal Reserve – really knows how many dollars exist in the world. On the wide M3 measure encompassing cash, bank accounts, government bonds and all other instantly convertible dollar-denominated instruments, it is believed there are about 21 trillion dollars in the world. (This is a measure of money, not of assets such as property and shares).
Nobody knows how much of this money is held outside the United States; about 65% seems a broad consensus but you can find estimates from reputable institutions ranging from 45% to 75%.
Because the US is the world’s reserve currency and essential to trade, at least half and probably most dollars exist outside the US economy. That is what is unique about having the world’s reserve currency. It means nations will always be willing to borrow from you more money you have just created, to finance their purchases of oil, grain and other essentials and luxuries.
What prevents governments in general from just printing more money is fear of inflationary effects by devaluing the currency (though the notion that this is a simple relationship is less prevalent now than at the height of monetarism). However, the unique advantage of the United States is that any domestic inflationary effect from creating more dollars is effectively buffered by the fact that most dollars are not in your economy: they are in other people’s economies, or sitting in overseas reserves. You can thus create dollars without creating much domestic inflation.
So it is great to have the world’s reserve currency. There is no danger of the US not being able to finance trillion-dollar trade deficits in the next few years. But for how long?
What the trade deficit actually is, in practice, is the world giving the USA astonishing quantities of very real goods in exchange for some transferred data or bits of paper. That depends on a confidence which is waning.
In the simplest of terms, in 2000 the USA had approximately 30% of world GDP and China approximately 4%. Now the USA has approximately 26% and China approximately 18%. In manufacturing, China has overtaken the USA.
Attaining world reserve currency status ultimately depends on trust around the globe that your currency represents the best store of value. It is a status essentially linked to economic performance.
Famously, nations which moot using other currencies than the dollar for trading, particularly in oil, are immediately targeted for regime change. This represents a realistic appraisal by the USA of the importance of retaining its global currency status. In time, people and institutions are simply going to want to hold yuan not dollars. The dollar-oriented Bretton Woods institutions are already losing ground to Chinese finance in importance to development in the Global South.
Proposals such as a BRICS basket of currencies for trade are only symptoms of the coming change; the configuration of institutional and trading arrangements as the dollar loses its dominance do not affect the big picture.
How crypto will ultimately fit in with the governmental systems is a very large question. If it does have a significant role, that too can only be a threat to the dollar’s necessity for trade.
To circle back, the US cannot enter the period of loss of reserve currency status with this level of trade deficit. Whether Trump sees this, or is rather fixated on the social effects of globalisation and the gutting of manufacturing in Middle America, I do not know.
Leaving aside the total chaos of Trump’s on/off tariff implementation, I do not see how Trump’s policy can succeed. The difficulty is that America’s manufacturing capability has been destroyed. There are no great rows of blast furnaces sitting there just waiting to come back on and replace imported steel.
Take the cotton industry, once massive in the USA. The 46% tariff proposed on Vietnam and the 37% on Bangladesh relate primarily to imports of clothing. The cotton textile industry is a fine example of the effects of globalisation. Levi Strauss, Fruit of the Loom, Hanes and Carhatt outsourced their factories to Latin America and Asia, almost entirely ending US production. American Apparel tried to hold out, but went bankrupt in 2017 and now produces largely overseas. Only niche production (organic or upmarket) remains.
This has happened since the 1990s – Levi Strauss, for example, stopped all US manufacturing in 2003. Entire cities were devastated. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) union folded for want of members.
But can the clock really be turned back? The factories are gone. Will sticking a 46% tariff on Vietnam cause Fruit of the Loom or Levi Strauss to return manufacturing to the USA, or will it just make clothes more expensive in the USA? That might itself reduce the trade deficit by causing people to buy less clothes. But for cotton manufacturing to return to the USA, entailing massive investment, companies would have to be certain the tariffs were permanent. That appears to be the least likely obstacle to overcome. Tariffs would also have to be sufficiently high to overcome the difference in labour costs; that is dubious.
The USA is still a massive exporter of cotton, in large part to those countries where it is manufactured into textile and sold back to the USA. Whether there is a labour force inside the USA waiting to work in textile and clothing factories I am less sure. Insofar as there is, I suspect Trump is trying to deport it.
I have just taken cotton as one example, but import substitution is much more difficult to achieve than to say. I am not such a fan of globalisation that I automatically decry tariffs. I enjoy cheap Chinese electronics and inexpensive underpants as much as the next man, but the profits have disproportionately gone to the billionaire class while working class manufacturing communities have indeed been devastated. But you can’t run an economy on nostalgia.
Trump’s tariff policy has been astonishingly chaotic and is not well articulated. But the underlying dynamics repay study beyond mockery, and the problem he is seeking to tackle is very real indeed. Those viewing Trump’s proposals as a joke need to say what they would do about the US trade deficit. Because the world is not going to supply them free goods forever.
———————————
My reporting and advocacy work has no source of finance at all other than your contributions to keep us going. We get nothing from any state nor any billionaire.
Anybody is welcome to republish and reuse, including in translation.
Because some people wish an alternative to PayPal, I have set up new methods of payment including a Patreon account and a Substack account if you wish to subscribe that way. The content will be the same as you get on this blog. Substack has the advantage of overcoming social media suppression by emailing you direct every time I post. You can if you wish subscribe free to Substack and use the email notifications as a trigger to come for this blog and read the articles for free. I am determined to maintain free access for those who cannot afford a subscription.
Click HERE TO DONATE if you do not see the Donate button above
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
PayPal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address NatWest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
You have a far higher opinion of China’s future than is merited, Craig. China fakes everything, including the inevitability of its global dominance. Whatever America’s future, it’s not going to be replaced as world hegemon by a paper dragon.
Check out those Australian studies that show China leading the world in (latest I’ve heard) 57 out of 64 areas of science and technology. China has a population at least as big as the whole West put together. A population hungry for advancement and ready to take on hard tasks. And a government which, whatever its other failings, doesn’t believe the market must always decide and doesn’t plan everything around winning the next election.
Nothing is inevitable, but China is already the world’s biggest market for cars and for short-haul passenger aircraft.
The person who has studied this question the most thoroughly is probably Ray Dalio, a brilliantly successful investor whose success was based on understanding global trends. Google for “ray dalio changing world order”.
Sadly, your view of China is really outdated. Their considerable investment in STEM education has propelled them to the forefront in technology and engineering.
Lol good try A . No cigar.
All the high end goods are produced there and now you can get from the same suppliers to sell you directly in their factory names at a fraction of the price. Don’t believe me?
‘🇨🇳 Chinese users are now posting videos on TikTok exposing luxury brands and promoting their Chinese suppliers.’
https://t.me/DDGeopolitics/144769
The first rule of a revolution is that the wheels need to keep turning. If the vast bulk of the people find themselves markedly worse off, the revolution is likely to collapse. As Craig and others are saying, it takes a long time to create factories to replace the stuff the USA imported from China and empty shelves or sky high prices in Walmart aren’t going to work out well for Trump. The sensible approach would be to announce a programme supported with phased tariffs. I think his problem is that he knows he has less than four years. Maybe much less if the Grim Reaper steps in. He’s allowing haste to overwhelm sense.
That argument is predicated on the “history is a product of economics” thesis. People ARE willing to sacrifice economically if they think the cause worth it. It isn’t always about money in your pocket. BTW, are you hinting that, hasty though you think he is, Trump’s policies might have a grain of sense hidden somewhere within them?
“…are you hinting that, hasty though you think he is, Trump’s policies might have a grain of sense hidden somewhere within them?”
=======
Some very unlikely voices in today’s Commons debate on British Steel made exactly that point,
Yes, of course there’s sense if you believe that countries should be able to make choices about their futures through democratic processes rather than having a supposedly impersonal market that in truth operates in the interest of its well-upholstered practitioners decide who of us are useless eaters. Globalisation has delivered tsunamis of cheap tat and has helped pull many countries out of poverty but the social consequences for ordinary people in the West have been dire. The thing here is that even if the American people have democratically decided to take a different course, I rather doubt they expected it to be followed so ineptly. The course I outlined would deliver much the same results in much the same time without anywhere near as much pain. But even it, in the longer term, would likely lead to a decoupled USA slipping further and further behind the global leaders. There are tradeoffs in everything we do.
The UK government has belatedly woken up to fact that being the only major industrialised country without a steel industry is a bad look. Imagine all the other world leaders sniggering behind Keith’s back at the next G8.
Whitehall has declared Scunthorpe a “strategic” asset. For strategic read “plate steel”. That’s the stuff that makes major infrastructure projects such as bridges, parts of nuclear power stations, oil rigs (not that we make any of those anymore), and crucially, weapons systems.
Port Talbot is switching to electric furnaces, and those won’t make plate steel (for reasons it would take some time to explain). For Scunthorpe to remain a “strategic asset”, it’ll have to retain its blast furnaces in order to make that plate steel for submarines, tanks, etcetera.
So why have the current owners declared the plant uneconomic? Well, a large part will be that blast furnaces (and coke ovens) are a direct emitter of CO2, and that means Carbon Tax (in the shape of the UK ETS which is effectively a rebranding of the EU ETS). If Keith has any sense, he’ll grant Scunthorpe dispensation from Carbon Tax while he’s “not nationalising” it today.
Why not? Claim force majeure. Washington is throwing the niceties of global commerce onto the funeral pyre, we might as well get in on the act.
Vivian.
And the warships being built in the Clyde.
“So why have the current owners declared the plant uneconomic? Well, a large part will be that blast furnaces (and coke ovens) are a direct emitter of CO2, and that means Carbon Tax ”
That and a whole load of other taxes, many on labour. Making money by moving money around is not a labour intensive process, but actually making something useful is. So if the money movers and skimmers rule the roost, then labour is going to be expensive.
“If Keith has any sense, he’ll grant Scunthorpe dispensation from Carbon Tax while he’s “not nationalising” it today.”
Yes, but that would upset the high priests of our new global pseudo-religion. Much easier to “nationalise it”, invest a lot of public money, then sell it off to a new lot of asset-strippers to start the cycle again and keep everyone happy.
‘“If Keith has any sense, he’ll grant Scunthorpe dispensation from Carbon Tax while he’s “not nationalising” it today.”’
Yes, but that would upset the high priests of our new global pseudo-religion.
=========
Do you really think so?
Last week a senior UK finance minister, Darren Jones said the era of globalisation has ended following Trump’s new tariffs.
For decades, British Steel, as it was, has been on a death spiral. The asset strippers and competitors were allowed to move in and destroy the company. I remember the problems with Tata many years ago. The company is now on it’s death bed and probably cannot be resurrected. What’s needed is a viable plan, and Starmer and his imbeciles are not capable of producing one.
There’s a lot of climate related nonsense about electric furnaces but these are incapable of producing the high quality steel the world wants and have to be ‘fed’ with quality ore to produce quality steel. So you start from a disadvantageous position from day one.
And, if this government is serious about strategic industries, what about: transport, water, gas, electric, nhs, farming ? All strategically important, all owned by foreigners, all with problems.
The fact is Westminster is the problem and our true enemy.
“There’s a lot of climate related nonsense about electric furnaces but these are incapable of producing the high quality steel the world wants”
Is that because they are fed with scrap steel? I once worked in a steel mill making steel from scrap and impurities were a big problem, even though the steel produced wasn’t particularly high quality.
American companies closed down American factories to drive up profits so the executives could cash in on their share options. I watched them do it during the 90’s and beyond. Old US factories which had been running for decades and decades were shuttered and the manufacturing transferred to China. They typically made the US workers train their foreign replacement to be eligible for full redundancy payments.
It was obvious at the time even to me it was a stupid move but it was driven by greed and a deep contempt for blue collar America by Wall Street.
No one made them, they fucked over their own working class to get rich quick and now it is gone, gutted, hollowed out.
There is no way China is going to be as self destructive, and moronic and ‘give it all back’.
Because the key difference between the Chinese and the US economies is that in the USA Wall Street is effectively the ‘central planner’. And they are greedy stupid short sight wankers only interested in themselves.
China (and Russia) on the other hand has real central planners who actually plan things to the general benefit of the Chinese and the country itself.
That is why the US (and the UK) is a complete collapsing mess and China is soaring.
There is no quick fix to this and Trump is delusional if thinks all this tariff crap will work. Four years can’t reverse this. It was decaeds in the making.
Trump is not stupid but he is deeply ignorant on so many things. I think he said he had read one book his whole life…Art of the Deal of course.
He is morphing into an absolute monster in front of our eyes. Way worse than anything I thought possible.
Hi Mac . Good to * see * you , your absence on WOS is a tangible loss : that site’s BTL is being ruined by the constant babble of sick genocide apologists , faux-Independence supporters & and clowns of varying shades of shit .
Yes , the one benefit ( to the world ) of Trump winning the last U.S Election – as opposed to the embarrassingly feeble/ill-equpped Harris – was the thought ( much , eh…..Trumpeted by him ) that he would end the Proxy War in Ukraine & and curb the excesses of the DEI ” culture ” .
He has done a bit of the latter , eg banning men from women’s sport , but has yet to put his pledges into action re Ukraine in any coherent way ; on the contrary seems to be making as much of a balls-up of that as he is of just about everything else .
The hubris is breathtaking , eg thinking that Russia ( and the rest of the world ) would/should simply genuflect before the great Emperor of Amerika and do what it’s instructed ( eg the * ceasefire * / attempt to buy the utterly corrupt Zelensky regime more time to rearm ) which , combined with the preposterous mentalitiy that presents the U.S as a poor , angelic innocent exploited by greedy , selfish Europe & China ( in particular ) makes for an unhinged , hyper-volatile train-wreck in the making . Nemesis will almost certainly follow . In fact , may be considered to already have arrived in the shape of BRICS . The only question is just how extreme will the U.S act in order to screw-up BRICS and maintain it’s hitherto unchallenged position as top global economic dog .
We knew , whomever won that U.S Election , the plight of the Palestinians would be unmitigated – every single U.S politician with even the remotest chance of becoming POTUS has been bought and controlled by AIPAC and the seemingly untouchable Zionist Hegemony – but , as stated above , the possibility of , at least , the Proxy War being brought to a conclusion would have been something positive . Instead , it appears the Yanks , having got , if not their ultimate goal , ie regime change in Russia , at least vast profits for it’s MIC benefactors , with more to follow from the ” Reconstruction ” of that shattered country – which it has been instrumental in wrecking by inciting/provoking the Russian response , has handed-over the continuance of the project to the collected idiotocracy of Europe . Though the idea of posturing buffoons like the loathsome political dwarfs Starmer & Macron – along with Psycho-Barbie WEF-groomed wannabe Valkyrie – Von der Leyen and her troupe of .EU grotesques * defeating * Russia is beyond risible . They’ll only * succeed * in prolonging the agony of Ukraine and the loss of even more of it’s people .
Trump is coming to seem like the ” perfect ” embodiment of the last days of an empire in terminal decline . No offence to the mass of U.S people , like everywhere else , they are the victims of the unconstrained power of malignant elites , but that country being knocked off it’s perch may , eventually , be the best thing that could happen to it . A little humility goes a long way , hopefully bringing the wisdom that comes from realising no country/people has/have a divine right to rule over others . However ” great ” they may imagine they are .
Hi Robert good to see you too. 🙂 And the other wings folk on here.
Putting the catastrophic geopolitical situation aside for once… I’d be curious to see what you think happened there on wings.
For me it was noticeable that BTL traffic died a death not long after the ‘omnicause’ article. Look it up, regular 500+ comments before just a few weeks later down to double digits by comparison.
I got put on premoderation (effectively a ban) for using the word ‘Palestine’ (I shit you not) and invited (politely) to fuck off. During an ongoing genocide… in Palestine. I like SC but seriously go fuck yourself.
The sad thing is (I have concluded) is that SC is a genocide supporting zionist it seems. I believe that is what has killed it for many I think, that realization.
My own view after much reluctance is that the reason you have these wankers like Ellis and Main swarming the site is they say the things he wants to say out loud but is too chicken to do so. He know he would have no readers left.
Look how he gets narrower and narrower as the world is engulfed by these monsters.
Yes , Mac , it’s pretty telling that you and RoS were/are banned and the creepy WASP Zionist/Zelensky groupie , Main is still there , every day without fail , vomiting his bile in a constant stream of comments . The rationale from S.C would probably be along the lines of ” I said I didn’t want * certain * subjects discussed BTL and yourself and RoS continued to discuss such ” but so did/does Main and , less frequently now , Ellis .
It’s his site , therefore his perogative what subjects are permissible ; fair enough , I suppose , but the consequence of such prohibition is , as you say , an extreme narrowing of debate with a consequent sharp fall in contributions in terms of the range , variety and number of comments . Maybe that’s how he wants it : like , eg Robin McAlpine , who simply puts out 2/3 blogposts pw and has no BTL function .
Whatever is going on there , I’m finding less and less reasons to follow the site : the almost exclusive focus on * Gender * issues/effects and how awful the SNP are ( no argument there ) is just becoming tedious , and unproductive ; as is the site’s offhand , dismissive attitude to any/every other Independence-related initiative .
At the current rate I suspect the site will dwindle into irrelevance and simply increase it’s already substantial quota of trolls , bores and bad actors of various shades .
Yeah it had become (a little) boring. I think this is maybe what the problem was that BTL had become more interesting than the articles. That is certainly why I was largely reading it towards the end. Aside from the house trolls there were still some very insightful and informative comments and commenters on there yourself included. There are a few folk in there who are really ‘on’ it. They don’t post comments all day long every day routinely smearing and slagging off everyone else BTL but when they do comment they are always worth reading. Quite a few comment on here as well.
As for the filters everyone was avoiding them to some extent because let’s be honest most of them were just fucking stupid. Besides if you and I are discussing something BTL what business is it of SC’s to tell us that certain subjects are not allowed. As long as we are not being abusive or whatever that is just censorship plain and simple.
There is an on-going massive clamp down on free speech in the UK. Wings BTL was a rare place to discuss things freely. Or so I thought. For a journalist to do this of all people is really fucked up when you think about it. I really do mean it when I say this is one of the last places left.
Plus it is an on-going genocide FFS. I was banned minutes after reproducing the UN convention on genocide, which I only did to counter his house troll Main who is on there every single day denying the genocide over and over again… absolutely no fucking problem with that though. I was banned for using the word ‘Palestine’ during an on-going genocide… in Palestine. Or P@lestine as you had to type it on there…
I sent SC another couple of replies that he never released in which I told him that this will not age well. And it really hasn’t and it is only going to get worse. It’s done now. You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. I am also finding myself losing interest in his blog as you predict. I am actually quite sad about it. It was all so unnecessary. Just let people chat…crazy.
To come back to Trump though… we could be here all week.
George Galloway touched on something the other day that I had been thinking as well… he said that with Trump the mask of American empire had been removed. I think the same, Trump is the perfect and true face of the American empire. Demanding tributes from the entire world…
Trump does not have the self-awareness to see how grotesque he is (at times)… because he is the living embodiment of what America has become. A bully, fully participating in a genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Holy Lands… It is hard to actually believe what I am seeing with my own eyes.
Trump’s whole world view is entrenched in beliefs that are no longer true. He thinks he is going to make America great again but it is not within his power. Instead he is going to preside over and contribute to its (relative) decline. Coupled to this is his massive ego. It is so enormous it complicates everything and makes every situation a potential mine field.
He has also surrounded himself with nutcases and clowns to a large extent just as he did first time around, consequently and predictably he is badly advised…
Col Doug Macgregor always says when interviewed President Trump has ‘good instincts’ but gets fed bad information. That just means Trump is not stupid but is ignorant. And that is exactly what he is.
The comments about how attractive the real estate in Gaza is while participating in a genocide and ethnic cleansing of its residents from antiquity and then taking the mineral wealth of Ukraine while a million plus dead Ukrainians are piling up in the US’s proxy war really does show us a grotesque monster who is not even aware he is one.
It is quite funny in a way… Galloway was laughing also as he remarked on it. He is not intending it of course but the ugliness of Trump makes him the perfect president for what the US has become. With Trump the mask is effectively removed and he says it all out loud.
It is going to be a long four years as the last few months amply demonstrate. Still at least it won’t be boring.
Are all these tariff Antics the result of having a business man as POTUS.. As China increases tariffs on US to 125%
Here – Yanis Varoufakis explains the mistake –
Trump ‘buckled under the pressure’ of failing markets | Yanis Varoufakis explains Trump U-turn – 8mins –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ou67YmnihY
Thank you for a really interesting article.
My thoughts are that while Thump’s trade imbalance surcharges appear on/off, I suspect that this is his typical deal-making style. He unsettles his opponents, hits them full force, watches the domestic fallout, pulls back strategically, all the while giving the genuine seal-seekers a time-limited breathing space. After that the screws will come down on the ‘mavericks’ .
China does what it does in order to save face domestically and to build relationships with countries not happy with the US and it’s imperialism. The EU is a basket case, and the UK a total dead loss. BRICS+ is on the rise.
Purpose of the tarrifs was to consolidate the US dollar as reserve currency. If the opposite comes through US will effectively go bankrupt.
Trumps policies may have a grain of sense hidden in them somewhere and they may be following the recommendations of the Heritage Foundation in their report Project 2025
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHAPTER-26.pdf
These would be the sweeping tariffs that are the stated policy of unelected corporate-financier interests, The overall plan might be to disrupt world trade particularly with China and to force companies to relocate to America.
“https://www.theinteldrop.org/2025/04/08/worst-case-scenario-trumps-tariffs-walling-us-off-ahead-of-wider-world-conflict/”
Trump is just theatre. Anyone who gets up at noon and goes to the golfcourse hasn’t got time to be really in charge.
desA: “China does what it does in order to save face domestically and to build relationships with countries not happy with the US and it’s imperialism. The EU is a basket case, and the UK a total dead loss. BRICS+ is on the rise”.
I agree with this apart from the first part. I see no evidence that China is trying to “save face domestically”. Although it must take the tariffs issue seriously, for the most part it is continuing business as usual focusing on what it can achieve rather than what it cannot do much about except respond in kind. Look at the Chinese media – call it putting on a brave face if you like – not a lot on tariffs but showcasing such as:
– the opening of a new motorway in Cambodia which is just one of the many regional infrastructure projects on its list
– the launching of a drone operated aerial taxi service and of a kind of air – borne motor car
– UNESCO recognition of two major historical heritage sites which visitors will enjoy with the benefits of AI and all sorts of wonderful things (UK gets a Universal Studios theme park to boast about).
Pre-empting Trump’s tariffs China is stoking up home consumption with lots of new for old types of incentives amongst others. It is actively seeking other countries to invest in China as a result. There is even starting today a high level UK delegation with about 20 companies, a Labour government minister and the Chinese ambassador attending a “home consumption” exhibition with a view to ramping up trade with China (a move which the UK government seems remarkably diffident about).
Russia has already shown how to combat USA and collective West economic aggression, I am pretty confident that ASEAN, BRICS and other advocates of multi – polarity will help one another to find alternative markets for USA tariffed goods and will find different ways of bursting Trump’s bubbles.
The US is suffering from the Dutch disease. It’s so easy for them to sell dollars, that producing other things to sell simply doesn’t pay. It’s like Spain in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries could sell silver from Potosí to finance everything it needed and for that reason could let its industry die.
Of course it is as far-sighted as peeing in one’s pants to keep warm. But rentiers aren’t far-sighted, they only think forward to the point they sell their shares, which on the average is 23 seconds, according to Mariana Mazzucato.
There may be another way of understanding Trump’s clumsy, inept efforts at building an isolationist USA – through the lens of the apocalyptic zionists and oligarch tech overlords. These absurdly wealthy pseudo religionists fantasise about sealed off bunker states and cities which are run like dystopian future robocop societies, for the rich elite, with no governments, no restraints and no citizens, merely drones. This article joins the dots very acutely and gives a perspective alarming and all too familiar if you have come across the wilder reaches of oligarch thinking like that of Thiel, Musk and their puppets like Vance. For them Trump is an easy gateway, a patsy, for their end times fantasies. The clincher is how Zionism, particularly the Christian Zionism which prevails in America, is the model – and if you look at the current holocaust in Palestine, the clearance of 2 million human beings out of the way of property developers and resource exploitation, it fits exactly the pattern of their preferred vision of the future in a world fast diminishing in resources and a stable climate. Further it helps in explaining the inadequacy of just shouting ‘fascism’ at these developments and how this is not a return to the thirties but a far more elaborate and dystopian vision of the future, one which a clown like Trump is enabling through his easily manipulated policies, conceived by these end times fanatics and stupidly implemented through his low attention span, comic book sensibility..
Read this here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
Ian
As far as I know The Zionists ( Christian and Israel) are in the mood to bring on ‘ End Times’
Armageddon – Blazing Chariots up to Heaven and the Chosen Few will sit at God’s Right Hand.
So – it’s a massive contradiction that whilst they are waiting for The End Times that they build bunkers and stay as far away as possible form the Un Chosen Many.
Of course for Jews to get into Heaven they must renounce/convert to a much younger religion – Christianity.
This the reason a wry smile comes to me when the Christian Right start slinging around anti – semitic accusations as anti- semetism doesn’t come any more anti – semitic as saying;
‘ You are not invited to rise up to Heaven in our Christian Blazing Chariot unless you denounce your religion.
I’m sure Mammon Worshipper Trump doesn’t believe all that crap – he fakes it to please his hopeful base.
Pretty sure Musk and Netanyahu don’t believe it either.
I’m pretty sure for Elon and all his fellow forward thinkers that, in a Post Nuclear War world there will not be much call for X or Amazon or Facebook ads etc as all the buyers will be dead.
As a business plan it ranks as high as you can get in stupidity from allegedly ‘clever ‘ men.
They can always go to Mars and stay there if the wish.
And there is no time like the present.
Oh and take Uncle Donald with them.
The biggest danger to humanity is not Russia or China – the biggest danger are people who think they know something when actually they know nothing outside of their own known existence.
Proof of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.
Einstein said that, physics is more about imagination than any mathematics.
Politics and Economics is not dis-similar.
‘
When a wise man points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger. A chinese saying. There are a lot of anti trumpets laughing at the finger. Nice to see you Craig acknowledging that there is a moon to discuss.
The reserve currency status was always going to end. It always does and a new one is always ready to take its place. This time it was the Digital one.
Unfortunately the EurAsian Giants have refused to play ball.
No easy bankruptcies and hoovering put of assets this time.
No failure of supplies for the masses who have to rely on a ‘New Deal’ to make them compliant at losing everything.
No rich getting richer Cher and poor poorer.
Most of all no escaping from unpayable bond interest to no interest paying bonds until they are shrink by inflation.
So i’m going all in to Chinese currencies including digital as soon as possible.
To see my retirement through.
Why? Because while our global robber barons planned to take them over with making them cheaper industrial producers and made the collective wests post war gains shrink and reduced hundreds of millions into poverty with terrible decaying infrastructure sold off to overseas hedge funds – the Chinese used their meagre earnings to raise their billion out of poverty and build the most advanced infrastructure!
Unleashing great innovation and production. Which will make them the builders of all major projects around the world for the rest of this century.
Including outer and INNER space.
What do our Masters do? Tell the Chinese to Stop making and building stuff;
Stop it being affordable and in high quality;
stop innovating;
stop making peoples lives better where they are born.
Because … you know western ‘civilisation’
Join BRICS?
Clearly a serious question not easily answered by elites whose property rights based wealth has one guarantor: The Rules Based International Order; or The Empire to you and me. And whose allegiance is therefor not to the people of their respective countries, or even any notion of the good of their nation, but to the core, and the power that sustains them.
It is important here, especially as Elon has now discovered the magic money tree, trees even, and yes they are real! It is important then to Understand that money is created out of thin air. The question then is: for whom is money created?; for what purpose, or stated goal is money created?; and perhaps most important of all who has the authority to create it, and who has given them that authority?
Socialism, cooperation, people focused policy, are all obvious inputs to a solution, but this threatens the meritocracy that the PMC have been educated enough, and are paid enough to believe in.
This self serving religion will be hard to dislodge from ourselves let alone the flunkies of elite power who dominate our political, media, and academic institutions. And when a Corbyn like figure arises, who threatens even to look at those possible solutions, and might begin to move us gently in the direction of those solutions, our elites move to assassinate.
Pitchfork anyone?
Why is the US still able to export massive amounts of cotton to the rest of the world at competitive prices? It’s party due to subsidies, but it’s mainly because a large amount of mechanisation is involved in the harvesting process etc, which much reduces the need for expensive (by global standards) labour. There’s plenty of scope for much more mechanisation to be applied to other industries such as garment production, making other US exports far more competitive too. At the moment, the US isn’t quite up there with China (or Japan & South Korea); however, a large number of industrial robots are still being installed every year to aid with this process. Sad to say, this is not the case for the UK.
https://x.com/G0ADM/status/1907760219909681259
In other news from the States: Katy Perry, Jeff Bezos’s soon-to-be-Mrs and some other distaff-side US celebs have safely returned from notching up a new first for womankind by boldly going to (the edge of) space in a rocket shaped like a large, erect penis. Some cynics have suggested it was just a publicity stunt, but I have it on good authority that they were carrying out cutting-edge scientific research into how plastic surgery, fillers etc hold up in zero gravity. Anyway, in honour of this important milestone, and as I haven’t quite come down from the sunny weekend, here’s KP, Pharrell, Mr Vic Hope & co performing ‘Feels’:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozv4q2ov3M
One of the main reasons that robots are cheaper than humans is that they can work in the cold and the dark. Also,in the UK, labour is absurdly over-taxed, with up to five separate taxes on it. You’d think robots would be more popular in the UK, but I suppose it’s the usual aversion to investing money in something that actually adds value, rather than simply speculating.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. The main advantage of robots is that you don’t have to pay them a salary. I always found it amusing over the last decade or so whenever I went past a hand car wash that had been set up in a disused petrol station, with a dozen or so people milling about (mostly illegals I’d imagine), and an old, probably broken automatic car wash machine from the 70’s or 80’s in the corner.
“The main advantage of robots is that you don’t have to pay them a salary. ”
So you would think, but robots are very expensive and they break down if you do not maintain them and that maintenance has to be done by human beings. A robot is just a mechanical slave: you pay a lot up front when you buy it, then you have to provide it with fuel and maintenance and eventually it becomes obsolete or worn out and you have to buy another. The experience of the southern US states was that waged labour was actually better value than slaves. The British slave owners came to realise this too and managed to con the government into banning slavery and paying them compensation for their “loss”. If you are in the business of selling robots, you would be a damn fool if you did not charge more or less the amortised cost of the salaries of the workers the robot will be replacing, knowing that the buyer is going to clean up on heating and lighting bills and not have to worry about robots going sick or taking holidays.
Thanks for your reply Bayard. Robots generally work out much cheaper in the medium-to-long term otherwise companies wouldn’t buy them. If you were in the robot-selling business, you wouldn’t be a fool (damned or otherwise) if you didn’t charge the full amortised cost of those workers’ salaries should your robot-selling competition be charging less than this.
I imagine that the destruction of foreign markets coupled with sanctions and tarrifs is a factor in the ‘competitiveness’ of the american markets. Recall the success of the satanic Mills in England was largely down to the destruction of millions of successful family run mills in India by the east India corporation (British Empire).
This approach is fully adopted by the USA to peddle its GM and antibiotic laced muck (aka: American food)
Thanks for your reply Stevie. Whatever the East India Company was doing on the sub-continent, the success of British textile mills was due to steam power and the division of labour. Cottage industries with hand (or foot) looms couldn’t begin to compete with that. There are quite a few antibiotics in prime pasture-fed British meat as well, which is one reason I don’t eat it. GM is fairly harmless: human beings have been doing that since the beginning of the neolithic – these days we’re just better at it.
An interesting piece. As Craig suggests the real issue is the increasingly rocky state of the US economy. The apparent need for tariffs are a symptom of fundamental weakness, as is the Trump pantomime act, which the media obligingly promote (to hide a well-planned US economic policy behind Trump’s supposed capriciousness).
Intriguingly, Trump was also at the helm when the covid lockdowns were imposed in 2020, which, of course, paralysed the world economy, to the great advantage of some sectors of the US economy (and note also how the West blamed the US usurper China for covid). Tellingly, too, the media completely ignored the enormous impact of shutting down huge economies, and still do, focusing instead on the politics of the lockdowns.
It’s hard not to see a pattern, especially since 2000 of the US taking increasingly desperate measures to shore up its position, under false pretences. Whatever the truth, I hope the US can find a dignified decline, for the sake of the American people, as well as world stability. Sadly, however, hubris, violence, deceit and contempt for the rest of the world have been a feature of the US leadership right from the start, and I am not sure that the moderating influences that helped unwind the British empire are necessarily present.
Yes, and now the Starmer fuhrer is blaming China for the destruction of British Steel when in fact its demise is solely down to successive ‘british’ governments.
The demise of British Steel was mainly caused by the usual British problem: bad management. The steel companies weren’t particularly well managed before they were nationalised, but nationalisation removed any incentive to do things better. Privatisation was an attempt to redress this (amongst other things, like making lots of money for The City), but ended up just handing everything over to asset-strippers. People tend to forget that the idea of nationalisation was not to allow the government to subsidise “strategic industries”, but to allow the profits of industry to subsidise the state.
Well it didn’t take Trump long to do, what we thought he’d do with China in mind.
“The US plans to use tariff negotiations to push trade partners to scale back economic ties with China, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing sources familiar with the talks. The strategy is reportedly aimed at securing commitments from countries hit by recent US tariff hikes to help isolate China’s economy and pressure Beijing to negotiate.
US President Donald Trump announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly 90 countries earlier this month, citing unfair trade practices. After global markets reacted by dropping sharply and several governments sought exemptions, he paused most of the tariffs for 90 days, reducing them to a baseline rate of 10%. However, the pause does not apply to China, whose exports to the US are now subject to tariffs of up to 145% amid an ongoing tit-for-tat trade war.
US officials aim to convince trade partners to accept permanent tariff cuts in exchange for curbing their economic engagement with China, according to the WSJ. Proposed commitments may vary by country, but could reportedly include stopping China from rerouting exports through third-party nations, banning Chinese firms from setting up operations locally to avoid US tariffs, and limiting imports of low-cost Chinese industrial goods.
Sources said the measures are meant to undermine China’s economy and reduce its leverage ahead of potential negotiations between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The US has already raised the proposal in early discussions with some countries.”
Chinese imports to the US could face tariffs as high as 245%, according to a White House fact sheet released on Tuesday… a result of its retaliatory actions,
Beijing’s retaliation has included a hike to 125% on all American imports, a suspension of global shipments of rare-earth metals and magnets used in tech and military industries. In addition, Beijing ordered Chinese airlines to stop accepting Boeing jets and parts,
[From RT]
This is typical Trump/USA/Zionist tactics. We can punch you in the face, bomb you, imprison your citizens but you cannot do anything to defend yourself. Meanwhile, all the vassal puppets line up to suck the orange member.
Great article here on the madness of King Trump.
https://huabinoliver.substack.com/p/when-the-tide-goes-out-we-know-who